Disable Animations in Cinnamon Desktop to Slightly Speed Up Your Linux Mint System

Struggling with a slow and laggy Linux Mint system on a low-end computer? Disabling window animation may give a tiny performance boost.
Warp Terminal

Let’s face it.

Cinnamon is already a lightweight desktop environment when compared to the likes of GNOME. But it may not be as light on resources as Xfce.

If you have a system which is low on hardware and you want a little bit of performance boost without switching to an alternative desktop environment (DE) like Xfce or window manager (WM) like Sway or Fluxbox.

Let me share a neat little trick that should help you speed up Linux Mint but only slightly.

Disabling animation effects in Cinnamon desktop

First things first, you must not expect a drastic improvement in overall desktop performance with this trick. Here’s why!

These animations or effects (as it is called in Mint) are noticed when you open, close applications windows, use the menu, have a dialogue box pop up etc. You don't get a constant boost since these events do not happen continuously.

Disabling these effects may help reduce the stutters if your system is really struggling. In those cases, every single bit helps. Let’s see how to do this!

Open the menu and look for effects here.

Accessing Effects settings in Linux Mint Cinnamon
Accessing Effects settings in Linux Mint Cinnamon

It opens the ‘effects’ settings window and you’ll be at the ‘Enable Effects’ tab. You’ll have the options to disable (or enable) various available animation effects here.

Disable animations in cinnamon Linux Mint Cinnamon Desktop
Disable animations in cinnamon Linux Mint Cinnamon Desktop

You can choose to disable some or all effects.

If you go to the Customize tab, you can customize various effects you saw in the ‘Enable Effects’ tab.

customize window animation cinnamon linux mint
Customizing window animation Cinnamon in Linux mint

The first column is the name of the effect, second one is the type of animation, third one is how the animation progresses and in the last one, you can configure how long the animation will take to complete.

If you select None, easeNone and 0 duration, it is equivalent to disabling the effect. Though, using the disable option in the other tab is an easier option.

Is it worth the effort?

I wrote this tip because a reader asked if it was possible to customize Cinnamon and disable the animations.

Quite honestly, it doesn’t take much effort and it doesn’t make much difference. You’ll hardly notice the visual impacts or even the performance improvements.

However, if your system is struggling a lot, every tiny bit helps. You can also try using lightweight applications that consume fewer system resources. That may also help you a bit.

If interested, here are a few more Cinnamon customization tips for Linux Mint users.

7 Ways to Customize Cinnamon Desktop in Linux [Beginner’s Guide]
Linux Mint is one the best Linux distributions for beginners. Especially Windows users that want to switch to Linux, will find its flagship Cinnamon desktop environment very familiar. Cinnamon gives a traditional desktop experience and many users like it as it is. It doesn’t mean you have to co…

And a look at a few tiny but useful features of Linux Mint.

Five Tiny Features of Linux Mint Cinnamon I’ve Come to Love
Brief: It’s FOSS reader Dave Merritt shares some hidden and ignored features of Linux Mint Cinnamon that he started to love. I’m often asked by traumatized Windows users which Linux operating system I would recommend. Until a year and a half ago I recommended Zorin OS without hesitation.

Do you have any similar small ninja tips? Do share with me in the comment sections.

About the author
Abhishek Prakash

Abhishek Prakash

Created It's FOSS 11 years ago to share my Linux adventures. Have a Master's degree in Engineering and years of IT industry experience. Huge fan of Agatha Christie detective mysteries 🕵️‍♂️

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